Opinion: To promote LGBTQ rights, engage with your neighbors

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On March 30, House Bill 2 was officially repealed with the passage of a compromise bill, House Bill 142. A compromise should be bittersweet. This one is sour.

HB142 places a more than three-year moratorium on local anti-discrimination laws and local employment ordinances, while leaving bathroom use regulations murky. The bill sparked immediate, vigorous condemnation from the Human Rights Campaign among other gay rights groups.

Their message — we can’t sit still until the end of 2020 while equal rights for LGBTQ North Carolinians are denied — is clear and just. It’s just not realistic in our current political environment. We can change that environment by using persuasion as well as passion.

North Carolina’s constitutional make-up makes it clear that the legal path forward for groups hoping to fully repeal HB2 runs through the democratic process and the N.C. General Assembly.

As it stands now, N.C.’s GOP, with its peculiar brand of power-centralizing conservatism, has exactly that: centralized control of the state’s democratic power. State Republicans’ ability to pass HB2 and exact their pound of flesh with HB142 has shown their political strength. Until those who support LGBTQ rights persuade enough others to be able to gain similar statehouse power, we can only expect similar results.

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Passionate conviction motivates the like-minded to action. It works less well on those who disagree on the basic assumptions that underlie support for LGBTQ rights. When North Carolina voters approved Amendment 1, (a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage), they did so with a margin of more than 20 percentage points.

That was only five years ago — so, we think it’s safe to assume that many North Carolinians still don’t believe in fully extending rights to the LGBTQ community.

Given our state’s ideological situation, arguing (or demanding) equality under the law and LGBTQ rights may not be the best rhetorical strategy. Instead, try convincing others with the plentiful evidence that sexual orientation is much more likely inborn than socially nurtured. It’s not a big leap from protecting other unchosen qualities, like race, to protecting sexual orientation. The same goes for gender identity.

Another persuasive tactic is to address people’s fear of the unknown. The respect and affection that come with becoming friends with someone openly outside the cis-hetero mold provide the best antidote to myth, fear and outright bigotry. Given that estimates of the population percentage of American adults who identify as transgender center around half of a percentage point, media will need to play a big role in increasing the visibility and public perception of the humanity of transgender people.

But the simple act of conversationally endorsing LGBTQ people’s humanity and equality (to those without any exposure to them) can go a long way as well.

None of this is to say that there isn’t a role for passionate political mobilization in achieving a real repeal for HB2. We simply think that the best way to win a political battle is to have more troops. And it’s up to us to recruit them.